


Flower in Winter

by sandrine_geist



Category: Original Work, Spring Awakening - Sheik/Sater
Genre: Alternate Universe, Deaf Character, F/F, F/M, Ghosts, M/M, Original Character Death(s), Original Character(s), Other, Please Don't Hate Me, please don't hate this
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-11
Updated: 2017-01-11
Packaged: 2018-09-16 19:18:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9286178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sandrine_geist/pseuds/sandrine_geist
Summary: Ilse meets a beautiful and mysterious girl on a train who causes ghosts from her past to resurface. Other things happen too, but I'm still writing this goddamn mess of a story.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this because I wanted to read more stories about Ilse, and I couldn't find any. It's 4 AM, so if this is horrible, I'm so sorry.  
> Also, if its not clear, it is meant to be from Ilse's pov.  
> Thanks bye.

I meet her on a train.

When she touches my arm, it is like electricity. Be it static or otherwise, she shocks me. She speaks again, her lips moving against the blanketed silence of the overcrowded train. She likes the book I am reading, she tells me, pointing at Mood Indigo in my lap. I nod and tap at my ears. _I can’t hear you_ , I say, _I’m deaf_. She smiles, like sunshine hitting a military cemetery, and pushes her long hair out of her face—it falls like ink on her back.

She holds her hand out in half of a complete handshake and tells me that her name is Lee, Victory Lee, and that she just arrived here from across the sea. It was her first time on a boat, she signs to me—it was a rough voyage, with the sea like knives. She has come here on the bidding of a dream, she tells me. The one she loved died, she does not know how long ago—the government that found the body sent a letter, but it was vague, and undated, with lines blacked out—rendering information illegible.

She saw her lost love in a dream, she tells me, for the first time in years. _Ramona Felisa_ , she tells me the name with a sort of poetic reverence.

<<She came to me with roses in her hair.>>, Victory tells me, looking half at me, half into space and air. <<She was standing in a lilac clearing, dressed in gold, her arms bare and covered in lines like a map. ‘Ramona!’, I cried, running towards her. It had been so many years since I’d seen her, since she’d left. Somedays, it’s hard to remember back. Back before the bombs fell, before my father left bit by bit, as the days drained out of him, before my mother disappeared all at once, before the indigo summer, before they took my brother away at midnight—their boots crushing the flowers my grandfather watered in moonlight, before my country fell to pieces, before it all shattered like china on the kitchen floor.

I ran to her, in that dreamy way, in which you are half body, half air. But it felt different than most dreams—I could feel the crush of lilacs beneath my feet—though I did not stop to mourn the loss, I could smell the sunshine in the air, feel its prickling warmth on my neck and the backs of my legs—not even in life had I felt as much as I did then.

When I reached her, I faltered for a moment: was she naught more than an apparition that soon vanish like mist in afternoon sun? I did not know, and for fear, we stood together and I could not speak. She put her hand on my shoulder—her touch burnt like the cold and all at once my voice returned to me.

‘I thought you were gone.’

When she spoke, it was like the first breeze of spring.

‘I was. I am. Well,’ she said, relenting slightly with a grin half bitter, half honey, ‘nearly gone. Very nearly. Mostly, really.’ She laughed into the sun, frost forming in the air around her. ‘Oh—you know me, Vic! I always said I’d come back! Even as a shadow, even as a dream.’

‘What happened to you?’ I ask, half wanting, half dreading her answer.

She smiles, sad as rain, ‘sweet Victory, they found me. I thought I was nearly away—it had been many years. I thought that they would tire of hating me, of searching for me, of thirsting for my blood—spilt warn in the snow. I thought they would tire of vengeance, of making me pay for what I’d done. I was wrong—I was wrong.’

Her voice shook like bedsheets on a clothesline, so she leaned in close and whispered the rest in my ear: how they found her at last that cold night, how they’d cornered her at the edge of the city, and pierced her traitor’s heart. She told me how her blood steamed in the fresh snow, before, it too, turned cold. She told me how the world faded around her, but that she kept her eyes open till the end. That she looked them straight in the eyes as her blood and her life bled out of her, as the light crept in behind her eyes. And that she never broke eye contact, that she made them watch her die.

She told me all this standing straight with lilacs leant against her frost-covered legs. She told me all this with sunshine and roses interwoven in her hair. She told me all this as songbirds sang their Sunday song in the meadows past the river behind the green forest. She told me all this dressed in gold with bare arms covered in lines like a map. She told me all this—all this—and she was dead! A shadow! A dream! A ghost.

She looked into my eyes, and I into her’s, and I could see the light building behind them, and I knew that she was more than halfway gone. She looked back towards the gaining horizon and I knew that whatever was beyond, whatever was next, it was calling her. And I knew she would answer the call.

She placed her icy hand flat against my chest, right over my heart. I could feel my heart beating underneath her cold touch. As the light closed in on us she kissed me, her freezing lips pressed against mine, turning me to ice. When the light pulled away, she was gone—but for the ice on the lilac-ed ground, and the ice in my heart.>>

Victory Lee tells me all this on the overcrowded bus, her words falling, from her hands, from her lips, like water into my lap. She puts one hand to her heart—as though she’s taking a pledge. <<I can still feel the ice, you know. No matter how much sunshine I drink at midday, it won’t thaw.>>

I tell her, I’m sorry, I’m sorry that she is half frozen inside, half dead, half alive. Victory Lee smiles, half bitter, half honey. <<I’m learning how to live,>> she tells me, ‘it is not painless, yet I continue to exist.’

She tells me that after she was visited in her dream that she sold her belongings, for a ticket. A ticket to a place she had never seen nor stepped upon. Why?, I ask her. She tells me that she had thought that perhaps, if she could be where Romana had last been, where she had last stepped, breathe some last remaining particle of the air she had last breathed, that perhaps her heart would soften and beat warm once again. <<Besides—>> she flings the words from her fingertips like a poisoned drink <<—I had nothing left in that dead land.>>

The train stops. The passengers bustle and rattle. They bump and sway, gathering their lives into their suitcases, their backpacks, into their purses, and duffel bags, and back pockets. They exit. We exit. We all step into the sunlight, blinking in its brilliance. Victory steps into the street, tilting her head back into the sunshine. She moves her lips, as if in prayer that this will be the right ray of light to warm her ice heart.

I want to ask her if it worked—if she’s been healed by this country’s sun, but she is turned away from me, face still to the sky, eyes closed, still begging the sun, cheeks painted in sunshine. She is still turned towards the sun when the blue and white Country’s Best Bread truck slams to a halt—though not in time to avoid hitting her. The cow on the side of the truck continues its toothy grin. <<It’s moo-licious!>> the cow promises with a cheery thumbs-up.

I kneel in her blood. Its red stain creeps onto my long dress—it used to belong to my ghost mother. She lies, broken, on the street. Victory looks up at me, her cheeks pale, her eyes bright behind the sockets. She smiles with the sad knowledge of a dying child. She sits halfway up, and pulls me closer by the collar of my coat.

Victory Lee kisses me. Her kiss is like absinthe—half poison, half god. She falls back, her head hitting against the asphalt road. She reaches her bloodied hand towards my face, frozen fingertips brushing against the lid of my left eye. Blood mixed with salt and tears cut a sharp path down her elegant face, but her eyes are bright and she is smiling. She smiles and puts my hand to her chest, covering her heart. It is no longer frozen.

I ignore the tears making their way down my face. When she leaves, I stand up and brush the soot and dirt from my knees. There is naught to be done about the splotches of blood. I retie the loose lace on my right boot and fix my rumpled coat collar. Then, I straighten my shoulders and make my way through the streets, back to my flat, away from the empty body of Victory Lee crumpled on the cold road. I ignore the ice in my left eye.

**Author's Note:**

> Please let me know what you thought. I would adore any advice or ideas for improvement. Tell me in the comments if there's anything I should fix. If you hate this and think that I'm a shit writer, then leave a comment. I don't mind. Please, I'm really so lonely. Wow, this got sad real fucking fast.


End file.
